Tag Archive: Glenn Kessler

The Washington Post Fact Checker Turns Fact-Checking on its Head Health care has emerged as a key issue for the 2018 mid-term elections. The mainstream press has largely supported a narrative that support for a lawsuit asserting the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional shows opposition to protections for pre-existing conditions. The Washington Post Fact Checker published a fact check showcasing…Read more

To what degree do GOP health care reform proposals kick people off health insurance? Is there a Democrat who has failed to repeat the talking point that one or another such bill will kick some millions off their insurance? The claim appears ubiquitous, yet fact checkers like the Washington Post Fact Checker and PolitiFact have pretty much ignored the deceptive…Read more

In 2014 we first heard of a branch of scholarly research purporting to support the accuracy of mainstream fact checking. The research was mentioned in a paper by political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, The Effect of Fact-checking on Elites: A field experiment on U.S. state legislators: While individual fact-checks sometimes veer into punditry or semantic disputes (Marx 2012;…Read more

Early on Dec. 31, 2014 we published a critique of the way the three major mainstream fact checkers, FactCheck.org, the Washington Post Fact Checker and PolitiFact, used a 2012 quotation from Romney campaign pollster Neil Newhouse. Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post Fact Checker, didn’t waste much time in responding. That’s one thing we absolutely love about the guy. On Twitter,…Read more

“Contrary to Cheney’s assertion, waterboarding was an important charge in a number of the lesser-profile cases.” —Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post Fact Checker, from a Dec. 16, 2014 fact check of former Vice President Dick Cheney Overview In a fact check of the former vice president, the Washington Post Fact Checker muddies the waterboarding. The Facts Former Vice President Dick…Read more

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead.” Henry V, from Shakespeare’s “Henry V” Mainstream media fact checkers have done a lousy job of alerting their readers to Democrats’ deceptive gender pay gap claims. We’ll review the fact checks of the pay gap issue from FactCheck.org, the Washington Post…Read more

“The ad certainly leaves the impression (Andrea) Kodad had to give up her plan. Given the circumstances, her tale of woe from November seems rather out of date.” —Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post Fact Checker, in a column from May 7, 2014 Overview The Washington Post Fact Checker fails to offer charitable interpretation to an Obamacare attack ad, with…Read more

Jack Marshall of the Ethics Alarms blog slammed Democrats for their gender wage gap demagoguery with an April 15 post. That post directly inspires this critique of Glenn Kessler’s treatment of the gender pay gap. Kessler writes the Washington Post’s fact checks as the Washington Post Fact Checker. The key deception the Democrats use on the gender pay gap issue…Read more

On July 19, 2013 the Washington Post Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, published a fact check of President Obama’s claim that the ACA’s medical loss ratio rules saved consumers $3.4 billion. That interested us, for we fact checked a version of the same claim coming from Consumer Reports. Finding other fact checkers investigating similar claims provides an opportunity to see how…Read more